Why I am agnostic rather than atheist.

[Brian Shanahan]

Most people have a hard time finding a flaw in Zeno's reasoning that an arrow can never reach its target, but the fact that arrows regularly do so provide all the foundation needed to assert that there is one.

The flaw there is that Zeno treats time as a series of discrete events, whereas in reality it is a continuous event of itself. His proof only works if we assume that time is a series of disjointed events seperate from each other.

 

[warpus]

The fault with the Zeno "paradox" is that those discrete intervals, which there is an infinite amount of, DO approach a finite value.

So the arrow reaches its target, but it's easy enough to break up the time period during which it is travelling into an infinite number of discrete units, and then claim that since there's an infinite number of them that it can never reach its destination. That is very faulty logic which ignores the fact that an infinite number of things can approach a finite value.

It's like claiming that I'll never die because it's possible to divide up my life into an infinite amount of time periods.

 

[Borachio]

It's like claiming that I'll never die because it's possible to divide up my life into an infinite amount of time periods.

I'm banking on this being true. So far so good.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Then you're weird. And also, then physics (as we know it) has nothing to say on it.

Aw

 

[warpus]

I'm banking on this being true. So far so good.

Actually I guess technically it is probably false due to planck time.. crap

 

[Souron]

Actually I guess technically it is probably false due to planck time.. crap

Incorrect. Plank time is the smallest useful measure of time because uncertainty dominates at smaller intervals, but time is not discrete. Not according to established physics. Some theories of quantum gravity do posit discrete time, but they are unproven.

 

[warpus]

Incorrect. Plank time is the smallest useful measure of time because uncertainty dominates at smaller intervals, but time is not discrete. Not according to established physics. Some theories of quantum gravity do posit discrete time, but they are unproven.

Interesting. What about planck length?

 

[duckstab]

The fault with the Zeno "paradox" is that those discrete intervals, which there is an infinite amount of, DO approach a finite value.

So the arrow reaches its target, but it's easy enough to break up the time period during which it is travelling into an infinite number of discrete units, and then claim that since there's an infinite number of them that it can never reach its destination. That is very faulty logic which ignores the fact that an infinite number of things can approach a finite value.

It's like claiming that I'll never die because it's possible to divide up my life into an infinite amount of time periods.

Here's how I like to think about it. Zeno's argument takes time to present. If Zeno's argument is true, he can never finish it, but if it is false, he can. Since he was able to finish his argument, it is false.

 

[Crezth]

Here's how I like to think about it. Zeno's argument takes time to present. If Zeno's argument is true, he can never finish it, but if it is false, he can. Since he was able to finish his argument, it is false.

Rather an evasion, since the point was never literal to begin with.

 

[Souron]

Interesting. What about planck length?

Same thing. The two quantities are closely related, so most theories (of quantum gravity) in which space is "foamy" or discrete in time, are discrete in space and both of those happen at plank orders of magnitude.

 

[Souron]

Confidence in probability happens when a test is done a number of times (or a survey carried out with a number of respondants) and an average response from the number of tests is calculated. Then the confidence interval is calculated based upon the number of tests (respondants) and the deviation of individual respondants from the average to allow you to say that "I am 95% (1.65 standard deviations from the average) that the result +/- X.YZ% is the actual mean for all iterations of the situation tested".

What confidence gives you is a window between which you expect most tests or responses to come. With more tests or people surveyed (as long as they are properly conducted, the testers unbiased, and in surveys responders are randomly selected) the confidence will get tighter and tighter (the law of diminishing returns kicking in over time).

Assigning a 50/50 probability to God/no God is incorrect for two reasons, 1) we've no actual tests to establish probability to any degree of accuracy, and 2) indirectly (from the study of a lot of physical phenomena and systems) we have a lot of evidence which suggests that the universe does not need a god to exist or be created, thus indicating the probability to be less than 50% in favour of God. Now this does not mean that the actual odds aren't 50/50, it just means that given our current knowledge we have nothing to suggest that they are.

That's a very narrow definition of confidence that does not coincide with the practice I described. You're right you cannot assign a confidence interval to an arbitrary statement, but you can express your own degree of certainty to such a statement. And that degree of certainty is often given as a probability.